Organization Seeks To Make The Inner Harbor Swimmable

How would you like to fish in the Inner Harbor, maybe even swim, in the Inner Harbor? There's a group that says that it's possible, and it should happen by 2020.

The Waterfront Partnership is hoping to make the Inner Harbor swimmable and fishable. The organization in downtown Baltimore is tasked with cleaning the Inner Harbor. Their "Healthy Harbor Initiative" is based on cleaning the water and making it swimmable by the year 2020, Adam Lindquist, Healthy Harbor Coordinator for the Waterfront Partnership, explains.

Their plan includes oysters.

Downtown businesses and Baltimore City students planted a dozen baby oysters in the Inner Harbor. This has helped to filter the water in the Inner Harbor and, historically, in the Chesapeake Bay, according to Lindquist.

"An adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day and remove a lot of pollution," he says.

Roughly 1,000 oysters from the Inner Harbor Oyster gardens will be pulled and relocated to an oyster reef at the Chesapeake Bay. They'll place more oysters in Inner Harbor in the fall.

Other resources have been working on the water as well, such as the water wheel.